Читать книгу The Sea and Its Living Wonders - G. Hartwig - Страница 42

Table of Contents

MARINE CONSTRUCTIONS.

Lighthouses.—The Eddystone.—Winstanley's Lighthouse, 1696.—The Storm of 1703.—Rudyerd's Lighthouse destroyed by Fire in 1755.—Singular Death of one of the Lighthouse Men.—Anecdote of Louis XIV.—Smeaton.—Bell Rock Lighthouse.—History of the Erection of Skerryvore Lighthouse.—Illumination Lighthouses.—The Breakwater at Cherbourg.—Liverpool Docks.—The Tubular Bridge over the Menai Straits.—The Sub-oceanic Mine of Botallack.

In one of the finest passages of "Childe Harold," Byron contrasts the gigantic power of the sea with the weakness of man. He describes the resistless billows contemptuously playing with the impotent mariner—now heaving him to the skies, now whelming him deep in the bosom of the tumultuous waters; he mocks the vain pride of our armadas, which are but the playthings of ocean, and points with a bitter sneer at the wrecks with which he strews his shores. A less misanthropic mood or a more truthful view of things might have prompted the wayward poet to celebrate the triumphs of man over the brute strength of the winds and waves; how, guided by the compass, he boldly steers through the vast waste of waters, how he excavates the artificial harbour, or piles up the breakwater to protect his bark against the destructive agencies of the billow and the storm, or how he erects the lighthouse to point out the neighbourhood of dangerous shoals or the entrance of the friendly port.

The various constructions planned and executed by man to disarm the turbulent or perfidious seas of a great part of their terrors, are indeed among the noblest monuments of his architectural genius, nor are any more deserving of universal applause and gratitude. Who has ever performed a winter voyage homewards over the wide Atlantic and not felt a thrill of delight when the first bright flash of light beamed over the dark waters and welcomed him back to his native isle? or what generous mind has ever experienced this feeling without devoting the tribute of its thanks to the wise and beneficent men whose energy and perseverance have succeeded in lighting every headland or estuary of our rugged coast? So completely has this been done, that in the dark and stormy night, almost as well as in the brightest day, the homeward-bound ship need not approach danger without receiving friendly warning, for her pathway is illuminated by gigantic fire-beacons so thickly set that when one fades to the sight a new one rises to the view.

Among the numerous lighthouses with which the genius of humanity has encircled our native shores, the Eddystone, the Bell Rock, and the Skerryvore, are pre-eminent for the vast difficulties that had to be surmounted in their construction, situated as they are upon solitary rocks, exposed to the full fury of the insurgent waves; and should by some revolution all other monuments erected by man be swept away from the surface of our land, and these alone remain, they would suffice to testify to future ages that these islands were once inhabited by a highly civilised and energetic race, one well worthy to lay claim to the dominion of the seas.

At the distance of about twelve miles and a half from Plymouth Sound, and intercepting, as it were, the entrance of the Channel, the Eddystone rocks had been for ages a perpetual menace to the mariner. The number of vessels wrecked on these perfidious shoals must have been terrible indeed, it being even now a common thing in foggy weather for homeward-bound ships to make the Eddystone Lighthouse as the first point of land of Great Britain, so that in the night and nearly at high water, when the whole range of the rocks is covered, the most careful pilot might run his ship upon them, if nothing was placed there by way of warning. As the trade of England increased, the number of fatal accidents naturally augmented, rendering it more and more desirable to crest the Eddystone with a tutelary beacon; yet years elapsed before an architect appeared bold enough to undertake the task. At length, in 1696, Mr. Winstanley, a country gentleman and amateur engineer, made the first attempt of raising a lighthouse on those sea-beaten rocks, but as he was possessed of more enterprise than solid knowledge, the structure he erected was deficient in every element of stability. Yet such was the presumption of the man that he was known to express a wish that the fiercest storm that ever blew might arise to test the solidity of the fabric. The elements took him at his word, for while on a visit of inspection to his lighthouse the dreadful storm of November 26, 1703, arose, the only storm which in our latitude has equalled the rage of a tropical hurricane. "No other tempest," says Macaulay in his Essay on Addison, "was ever in this country the occasion of a Parliamentary address or of a public fast. Whole fleets had been cast away. Large mansions had been blown down. One Prelate had been buried beneath the ruins of his palace. London and Bristol had presented the appearance of cities just sacked. Hundreds of families were still in mourning. The prostrate trunks of large trees and the ruins of houses still attested in all the southern counties the fury of the blast." No wonder that a tempest like this swept away the ill-constructed lighthouse like the "unsubstantial fabric of a vision," and that neither poor Mr. Winstanley nor any of his companions survived to recount the terrors of that dreadful night.

Strange to say, the task of rebuilding the Eddystone lighthouse, which was now felt as a national necessity, once more devolved, not upon a professed architect, but upon a Mr. Rudyerd, a linendraper of Ludgate Hill, the son of a Cornish vagrant, who had raised himself by his talents and industry from rags and mendicancy to a station of honourable competence. The choice, however, was not ill made, for, with the assistance of two competent shipwrights, the London tradesman constructed an edifice which, though mainly of timber, was so firmly bolted to the rock with iron branches that for nearly half a century it resisted the fury of the billows, and might have withstood them for many a year to come had it not been rapidly and completely destroyed by fire. This catastrophe, which happened on December 2, 1755, was marked by a strange accident, for while one of the light-keepers was engaged in throwing up water four yards higher than himself, a quantity of lead, dissolved by the heat of the flames, suddenly rushed like a torrent from the roof, and falling upon his head, face, and shoulders, burnt him in a dreadful manner. Having been conveyed to the hospital at Plymouth, he invariably told the surgeon who attended him, that he had swallowed part of the lead while looking upward; the reality of the assertion seemed quite incredible, for who could suppose it possible that any human being could exist after receiving melted lead into the stomach, much less that he should afterwards be able to bear the hardships and inconvenience from the length of time he was in getting on shore before any remedies could be applied. On the twelfth day, however, the man died, and having been opened a solid piece of lead, which weighed above seven ounces, was found in his stomach.[H]

[H] A full account of this extraordinary circumstance was sent to the Royal Society, and printed in vol. xlix. of their Transactions, p. 477.

Another interesting anecdote is attached to the history of Rudyerd's lighthouse. Louis XIV. being at war with England while it was being built, a French privateer took the men at work upon it and carried them to France, expecting, no doubt, a good reward for the achievement. His hopes, however, were doomed to a grievous disappointment, for while the captives lay in prison, the transaction reached the ears of the monarch, who immediately ordered them to be released and the captors to be put in their place; declaring that though he was at war with England, he was not at war with mankind. He therefore directed the men to be sent back to their work with presents; observing that the Eddystone lighthouse was so situated as to be of equal service to all nations navigating the Channel. It is gratifying to meet with this trait of natural generosity in a mind long since obscured by the bigotry which prompted the revocation of the Edit de Nantes.

Eddystone Lighthouse.

After these repeated disasters, the rebuilding of Eddystone lighthouse, in a more substantial manner than had hitherto been effected, was now no longer confided to amateur ingenuity, but to John Smeaton, an eminent civil engineer, one of those men who by originality of genius and strength of character are so well entitled to rank among the worthies of England. From his early infancy Smeaton (born May 28, 1724) gave tokens of the extraordinary abilities which were one day to render his name illustrious. Before he attained his sixth year his playthings were not the playthings of children but the tools which men employ: before he was fifteen he made for himself an engine for turning, forged his iron and steel, and had self-made tools of every sort for working in wood, ivory, and metals. At eighteen he by the strength of his genius acquired the art of working in most of the mechanical trades, and such was his untiring zeal that a part of every day was generally occupied in forming some ingenious piece of mechanism. In 1753, his various inventions and improvements had already attracted such notice that he was elected member of the Royal Society; and when, a few years later, the accident happened which burnt down the Eddystone lighthouse to the ground, he was at once fixed upon as the person most proper to rebuild it. A better choice could not possibly have been made, for Smeaton's lighthouse, firm as the rock on which it stands, has now already braved the storms of more than a century, and will no doubt continue to brave them for many ages to come. Of him it may well be said "exegit monumentum ære perennius," for to him is due the honour of having fixed the best form to be given to a marine lighthouse, and even now the Eddystone beacon-tower remains a model which has hardly been surpassed by the taller and more graceful edifices of Bell Rock and Skerryvore. Nothing could exceed the patient ingenuity, the sagacity, and forethought with which that great engineer mortised his tall tower to the wave-worn rock, and then dove-tailed the whole together, so as to make rock and tower practically one stone, and that of the very best form for deadening the action of the wave. Nor must we forget that our great marine lighthouses, of which Smeaton gave the model, are as remarkable from an artistic as from a utilitarian point of view, as pleasing to the man of taste as to the friend of humanity. "It is to be regretted," says, with perfect justice, the author of an excellent article in the Quarterly Review,[I] "that these structures are placed so far at sea that they are very little seen, for they are, taken altogether, perhaps the most perfect specimens of modern architecture which exist. Tall and graceful as the minar of an Eastern mosque, they possess far more solidity and beauty of construction; and, in addition to this, their form is as appropriate to the purposes for which it was designed as anything ever done by the Greeks, and consequently meets the requirements of good architecture quite as much as a column of the Parthenon."

[I] No. 228.

Covered to the height of fifteen feet at spring tide, and little more than a hundred yards in its extent, the famous Bell Rock, or Inchcape, facing the Frith of Tay at a distance of twelve miles at sea, was as dangerous to the navigation of the eastern coast of Scotland as the Eddystone had been to the entrance of the Channel. To erect a tower on a spot like this was an undertaking of no common boldness, but, fired by Smeaton's example, Mr. Robert Stevenson no less gloriously succeeded in converting what for ages had been a source of danger into a beacon of safety.